Jameson Wood, age 11, of Richmond, Va., for his question:
WHY DID JOHN WILKES BOOTH ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT LINCOLN?
President Abraham Lincoln went to the Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of April 14, 1865 to see a play called "Our American Cousin." A few minutes after 10 o'clock, John Wilkes Booth, one of the nation's best‑known actors at the time, entered the rear of the presidential box and shot Mr. Lincoln in the head.
After shooting President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth leaped to the stage below the presidential box, but caught his spur in a flag that was draped there. He limped across the stage, brandishing a dagger and shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis." This motto of the state of Virginia meant "Thus always to tyrants." Booth escaped through the back door, where he mounted a horse and fled. The Civil War had just ended. Many in the nation had bitterly criticized President Lincoln's policies and decisions. John Wilkes Booth was one of the critics.
Why did Booth assassinate President Lincoln? Historians say that along with his hatred, Booth was also most likely an emotionally unbalanced person.
Lincoln was carried to a neighboring house. Surrounded by members of his family and high government officials, the president died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15.
Booth fled on horseback to Maryland, where a friend, a former druggist's clerk named David Herold, helped him to escape to Virginia. On April 26, federal troops searching for Booth trapped the two men in a barn near Port Royal, Va. Herold surrendered, but Booth was killed.
Investigation showed that a number of other people were involved with Booth in a conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln and other government officials
Herold went on trial along with a carriage maker named George Atzerodt, who was accused of planning the murder of Vice‑President Andrew Johnson; Lewis Paine, a former Confederate soldier, for attempting to kill Secretary of State William Seward; and Mrs. Mary Surratt, owner of a Washington boardinghouse, who was accused of helping the plotters.
All four accused conspirators were tried and found guilty. They were hanged on July 7.
Also charged in the conspiracy were Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlin, boyhood friends of Booth's, who were charged with helping him plan the crime; Samuel Mudd, a Maryland physician who set Booth's broken leg after the assassination, and Edward Spangler, a stagehand at the Ford's Theatre.
Arnold, Mudd and O'Laughlin were sentenced to life imprisonment, and Spangler received a six‑year sentence. O'Laughlin died in prison in 1867 and President Johnson pardoned the other three in 1869.